Maslow on Management

Preface to the First Edition

I have made no effort to correct mistakes, to second guess anything, to cover up my prejudices, or to appear wiser or more knowledgeable than I was in the summer of 1962.

These journal notes were made during the summer of 1962 when I was a sort ofVisiting Fellow at the Non-Linear Systems, Inc. plant in Del Mar, California, at the invitation of Andrew Kay, President.

I came there, for no specific task or purpose, but I became very much interested in what was going on there for various reasons which will be apparent in the journal itself.

This is, however, not at all a study of a particular plant. It was the plant that opened up to me a body of theory and research which was entirely new to me and which set me to thinking and theorizing.

I had never before had any contact with industrial or managerial psychology, so the possibilities for general psychological theory hit me with great force, as I read first the books by Drucker and McGregor¹ that were used as “textbooks” at Non-Linear. I began to understand what Andrew Kay was trying to do there, and I read on voraciously in this fascinating new field of social psychology.

It has been my custom for some years to write to myself in a journal, to think things out on paper, sometimes freely associating and improvising, sometimes writing from previously worked out notes and outlines. This journal, however, was not handwritten as usual, but dictated on a tape recorder because I had available to me several ...